Install SCO OpenServer under VMware Workstation

I have been a SCO reseller since 1988, and I still have several
clients running SCO OpenServer. I don't have a computer dedicated
to running OpenServer, but it can frequently be very convenient to
have access to an OpenServer system for testing. And it is not
always acceptable to remotely access a client's system, because the
desired testing may require rebooting or other actions that would
prove disruptive to users of the system.

I have been using VMware Workstation version 4 for running
Windows 98 and various distributions of Linux, so it was natural to
want to do the same with OpenServer. However, I soon realized that
VMware does not support OpenServer. The reason apparently has to do
with how OpenServer interfaces with the hardware.

After several failed attempts, I managed to get OpenServer
installed and running quite successfully under VMware. I have been
using it for some time. It is very stable, and has proven very
useful to me.

I wanted to fully document the procedure for installing OpenServer
under VMware, for myself and for the public at large, so I went
through the entire procedure and documented every step along the
way. Here is the product of that process.

Start VMware.

Create a new virtual machine by selecting "File / New / New
Virtual Machine...".

Specify a "Memory: Guest size (MB)" of at least
"48", and click "Next".
(I tried 32MB and the installation failed with the error
"/ramFs/extractProd/extractAll terminated by signal
8".)

Specify a "Network connection" that suits your
requirements, and click "Next".
(I prefer "Bridged networking", which makes your virtual
machine appear as if it is just another system on your existing
network.)

Specify to "Create a new virtual disk", and click
"Next".

Specify a "Disk size (GB)" of at least "1",
specify "Allocate all disk space now" and "Split disk
into 2 GB files" as appropriate for your requirements, and
click "Next".

Note regarding driver for BusLogic MultiMaster BT-958 SCSI host
adapter:
VMware virtual machines emulate the BusLogic MultiMaster BT-958
SCSI host adapter. OpenServer includes drivers for this host
adapter, but for some reason installing OpenServer under VMware
without using the BusLogic MultiMaster BT-958 BTLD (which is
becoming increasingly difficult to find on the Internet) will
eventually result in a "no root disk controller
found" error.

Use [Up], [Down], [+] and [-] to
rearrange the boot order so that "CD-ROM Drive" is
first and "Hard Drive" is second.

Use [Up] or [Down] to select the "Hard
Drive" and press [Enter] to expand the
selection.

Use [Up] or [Down] to select the "VMware
Virtual IDE Hard-(PM)", then use [-] to rearrange
the boot order so that it is last in the boot order.

Save the BIOS settings and exit the BIOS setup utility by
pressing [F10] and confirming that you wish to "Save
configuration changes and exit now?".

Note regarding floppy drives and VMware:
For some unknown reason, VMware seems to have frequent problems
connecting to the diskette drive when booting a virtual machine. If
you receive a warning stating that VMware could not connect to the
floppy drive, click "OK" to dispense with the warning(s). Then,
click the "Reset" toolbar icon (or press [Ctrl-R]) to
recycle power to the virtual machine. After a few tries, you should
eventually be able to start the virtual machine with the floppy
drive connected.

At the "The installation can now proceed
unattended." prompt, choose "OK" and press
[Enter].

At the "Please select the floppy device you are
using:" prompt, choose "(2)
/dev/fd1".
(I know this is the wrong floppy device, but there is a method to
the madness, so stick with me here. We already loaded the blc
driver when we booted, so the installation can complete without
reloading it. After the installation, at boot-time, we will load
the driver once again, and then manually install the blc driver to
the root filesystem using btldinstall.)

At the "Please insert the floppy for BTLD package: blc
and press <Return>:" prompt, press
[Enter].

At the "Do you want to rebuild the kernel now?
(y/n):" prompt, choose "y" and press
[Enter].

At the "Do you want this kernel to boot by default?
(y/n):" prompt, choose "y" and press
[Enter].

At the "Do you want the kernel environment rebuilt?
(y/n):" prompt, choose "y" and press
[Enter].

At the "#" prompt, type "scologin
disable" and press [Enter].

Note regarding running the SCO GUI under VMware:
The SCO GUI does not appear to work well (if at all) with VMware.
This is probably largely because, since VMware does not support
OpenServer, (unlike Linux and Windows) there is no accelerated
video driver provide for it. If you require the GUI, then consider
using VNC to access the GUI remotely from your host operating
system. I have complete instructions and installation scripts for
use installing TightVNC onto OpenServer at
David.ComputerLandInc.com
(link dead, sorry)

Hi.
I have a problem with the install.
I see a message about errors accessing /dev/install.
I see this message is in the chinese documentation, but, I can't read chinese.
Can any give an idea to correct this?
TIA

Tue Nov 8 11:00:21 2005: 1307 TonyLawrence

It's seldom helpful to say "I see an error". Reproduce the exact error, and exactly WHEN it happened.

Wed Nov 9 00:14:15 2005: 1316 totaleklipz

Not sure about 5.0.4, haven't tried it, but OSR5.0.6/5.0.7 install and run quite well on VMWare Workstation 5 or the 5.5 release candidates now available from VMWare. No btld's required, just put in the CD and go. In all honesty, it was more work to get VMWare Workstation running on SuSE than it was to get OSR5 running under VMWare.

Sat Nov 12 00:14:23 2005: 1335 anonymous

I run vmware 5.0 with sco openserver 5.0.2...I get:

Error initializing access to device /dev/install;
There may be a BIOS setup problem or other hardware configuration error on that device.

I run my harddrive as IDE... it finds the disk...

Mon Jan 16 23:15:06 2006: 1513 anonymous

On my workstation it searched the blc package on fd(44) instead of 65.
I managed to work around this by adding btld=fd(65) at the end of the boot string. (maybe this is because I use a floppy image instead of real floppy ?)

Wed Feb 8 12:40:49 2006: 1608 anonymous

Hi.

I am trying to install SCO OpenServer 5.0.4
This release needs a boot disk, it can't boot from an image.img or from the CD.

I also get the error message:
----------------------------------------------------------
Starting Initial System Load from: Floppy Disk

Error initializing access to device /dev/install;
There may be a BIOS setup problem
or other hardware configuration error on that device.
Press <Enter>; to continue

** Safe to Power Off **
-or-
** Press Any Key to Reboot **
----------------------------------------------------------

Are there anyone that can help me with this error?

Thanks
Benny

Wed Feb 8 12:46:17 2006: 1609 TonyLawrence

There's a fair amount of material here; type "vmware" into the search at the top of the page.

Wed Feb 8 18:31:32 2006: 1613 BigDumbDinosaur

Hey, Benny!

Error initializing access to device /dev/install;There may be a BIOS setup problemor other hardware configuration error on that device.

Press <Enter>; to continue

** Safe to Power Off ** -or-** Press Any Key to Reboot **

Carefully read the above error message until you understand what it is telling you. If you can't solve BIOS setup problems (I have a hunch why you saw that message, but I'm not going to make it unnecessarily easy for you) you should consider hiring someone who is capable of that sort of thing. I'll give you one hint: /dev/install is the device file used to talk to the floppy disk (the A: drive) during ISL.

Thu Feb 23 12:49:54 2006: 1701 anonymous

On my install it wanted to install to the 0.1GB IDE drive.

To force the install to the SCSI drive I used:
restart hd=Sdsk link="blc" Sdsk=blc(0,0,0,0) Srom=wd(0,0,0,0)

and again at the second boot from the hard drive:
defbootstr hd=Sdsk link=blc btld=fd(64) Sdsk=blc(0,0,0,0)

Thu Mar 2 15:43:00 2006: 1735 anonymous

Create a ide disk in VM and at the SCO CD Boot type this like:
Boot: mem=1m-16,16m-512m/n
Then Install as normal installation on ide disk.
SCO use the PAE ..... with this limit to scan memory over !!!
Tested in GSX 2.5 and above !!!

Fri Apr 21 07:27:37 2006: 1951 anonymous

There is no floppy drive to boot "BusLogic Multimaster BT-958 BTLD" on my hardware. What can I use instead (second CD drive ?) and how to manage it. I am a SCO newbe.

I do not have access on
David.ComputerLandInc.com
(link dead, sorry)
for the TightVNC onto OpenServer installing hints. Has it moved ?

Tue Oct 3 11:16:04 2006: 2494 anonymous

I followed your instructions exactly, except from the creation of the ide disk (this is not possible with ESX). Everything seemed to work, part from the boot command "fd(64)unix link=blc root=hd(42)swap=hd(41)" message "unix not found".

Any idea how to solve this?

Henk

Fri Nov 3 15:26:45 2006: 2589 JMoore

I got Openserver 5.0.4 to work under VMWare Server 1.00. I gave up on these instructions and used an IDE disk instead, this way it works without any boot loader disks and I've setup a 10GB disk. The 5.0.4 boot disk won't work, you get a /dev/install error. I got the 5.0.7 evaluation media kit off SCO and used it's boot disk with the 5.0.4 CD.
It's a very easy install this way.

I was using a real floppy on sco openserver 5.0.7 and I had to add btld=fd(65) to the end as well to get it to boot after the install.

Mon Jan 29 15:31:57 2007: 2841 anonymous

Extremely detailed instructions!
A problem though with mkdev hd when running fdisk that cannot open device for reading.
I should say that I have 1 non-scsi disk and I'm trying to connect a scsi one.
Regards,
Filippos

Wed May 23 09:38:51 2007: 3005 Vincer

Thanks for the install listings
Found a few minor mods needed to install sco 5.0.6 on vmware 6.0.0
first boot line
� At the "Boot:" prompt, type "defbootstr hd=Sdsk link=blc Sdsk=blc(0,0,0,0) Srom=wd(0,0,0,0)" and press [Enter].
install blc reboot line
� At the "Boot:" prompt, type "defboostr hd=Sdsk link=blc btld(64) Sdsk=blc(0,0,0,0)" and press [Enter].

Finally I have my Openserver 5.0.5 in a VMware Server 1.0.1 virtual box. But not working so fine. Networks connections are extremally unstable and slow. FTP transfers are ridiculous (15 - 20 - 40Kbps). Its inacceptable.
Im trying everything a can; change kernel parameters, buffers size, etc. With no success.
Does anyone can help me?

Tue Jul 17 20:02:24 2007: 3060 pjvanellayahoocom

Not sure if you all know, SCO has issues with many network boards, this usually effects boards that are set automatically detect speeds10/100. Use scoadmin network, and set the speed to 10 or 100,(do not accept the default of autodetect). I have ran into this with many clients real hardware. Hope this helps

Fri Feb 15 01:31:32 2008: 3646 NicoKadelGarcia

I just did an SCO OpenServer 5.0.6 installation using VMWare Workstation 6 with the RHEL 5 compatible RPM's, and it worked just fine by using IDE drive configuraitons. Is there any compelling reason to use SCSI and the Buslogic painful installations?

Fri Feb 15 03:09:26 2008: 3647 TonyLawrence

No compelling reason..

Wed Mar 19 19:10:56 2008: 3859 pesantos

No if you are using 5.0.5 version or later. 5.0.4 have a 8GB size limit to IDE disks.

Wed Mar 19 23:18:51 2008: 3863 NicoKadelGarcia

Ohhh, yes, he old 1024 cylinder limit? If it's what I think it is, it has to do with boot loaders and BIOS's and all sorts of fun games finding the boot loader anywhere past the 1023rd cylinder. From my Linux experience, this was actually affected by disk geometries, as well!

Fri Mar 28 15:27:24 2008: 3911 Lee

Hi

I was following the guide word for word and all was going well. Up until i get to the point where you start the VMWARE session up after making the bios changes regarding Boot sequence etc.
For some reason i keep getting the error/alert saying -

No Bootable Device was detected

Now i have the floppy disk in which i created as per the guide (using the mmunix.exe file) all of which i believe went well. I also have the Sco Disk in the cd-rom. Now i think i have the right disk.....

We have three Sco Open Server disks. The one i have been using is labelled as having the following on -

SCO Open Server Enterprise System
SCO Open Server Network System
SCOUNIX Operating System

Among with numourous other things.

I have ensured that the correct devices are connected within VMWARE (floppy and cd-rom) and i am certain i have the boot priority correct.

I know the guide tells you that VMWARE can be troublesome regarding botting from a floppy and that you should just keep trying but i have many many times now without success.

Does anyone have any ideas? Obviously, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance

Fri Mar 28 18:20:02 2008: 3913 TonyLawrence

I dunno - I recently installed 5.0.7 under Fusion without any difficulty (though networking did not work - I didn't spend any time investigating as this install doesn't need it).

Thu Apr 24 10:27:48 2008: 4122 NicoKadelGarcia

I've just gone through this. OSR 5.0.6 also installs on VMWare ESX 3.5, reasonably gracefully, with the instructtions published here for OSR 5.0.4. Those instructions are simpler, and leave out all the 'create a tiny IDE partition" steps, which can't be done on ESX anyway due to its lack of IDE hard drive. Instead, simply install to the SCSI drive and install the drivers as described at (link)

Also, unless you're running on an OS that has a 2 Gig filesize limit, or need to be able to easily transfer disk images over FTP or HTTP, simply use a full-sized disk image as one file. This makes transferring them to LUN's or physical devices noticeably easier.

VMWare Workstation 6 can just use IDE emulated disks, but VMWare ESX requires these SCSI driver installations. If you're going to pass disk images among Workstation and ESX, handle them accordingly and be ready to install these drivers.

Can we get these drivers hosted somewhere, say here, in a direct floppy image format in order to avoid needing a pre-Windows-XP machine to unbundle the drivers?

I'm trying to create a vmx for SCO OpenServer 5.0.2 on VMware Player. I'm getting the same "error initializing /dev/install" message several other people report. I'm using a image of the boot disk, which appears to work up until this point.

(I have no floppy drive... I've considered adding a USB floppy (I'm using a laptop), but I'm guessing that if it wants a *real* drive for some hardware perculiarity, a drive on the other end of a USB controller isn't going to do the trick either.)

VMware's BIOS is reporting a 3 1/2" HD drive, which matches the image.

Does this definitely mean the floppy device? I've tried a physical CD, and an ISO image, makes no difference. SCSI or IDE vmdk makes no difference either, though I don't think it's getting that far.

Does anyone know what causes this? Can VMware install SOS 5.0.2 from a floppy? Is there another way to install it? (CD does not appear to be bootable.)

Cheers,
Graham.

Tue Jun 17 16:37:54 2008: 4341 Graham

I am coming to believe that the problem is a bug in the SCO floppy driver (certainly present in 5.0.5, and fixed in 5.0.7). I am unable to use the fixed driver from SLS OSS622a ( (link) for 5.0.5... it seems incompatible with the stuff on the 5.0.2 boot disk.

If I use the 5.0.7 boot disk ( (link) I get a lot further (into the install process), but it fails with "error 17" (unable to create symlink /bin/sh) (17 = file already exists, I believe). This technique, I'm told, *does* work for installing 5.0.4, but is obviously not compatible with the 5.0.2 install CD. This error appears to occur for other people who try mixing boot diskette and CD versions.

None of which helps me, but perhaps someone else...

Cheers,
Graham.

Thu Oct 9 10:16:32 2008: 4633 juku

Thank you!!

With modifing this guide I managed to install SCO 5.0.5 to VMWare ESX 3.5

I thought it was impossible according to all manuals in the Internet, but after couple of days of trying it worked out for me.

Tue Dec 2 18:43:05 2008: 4833 WLC

I also was able to get SCO 5.0.5 running in a ESX 3.5 IBM blade center with DS3400 SAN, The system runs great except when running a program with massive disk usage. I get an error "Unrecoverable error reading SCSI disk 0 dev 1/42 (ha=0 bus=0 id=0 lun=0) block xyzxyzxx. The system runs a job in 1hr 30 min that took 9 hours on the old HP PII machine. durring the run I will get 3 or four of the errors mention above and the block always changes. Has anyone experenced this. I am using the Buslogic SCSI drivers.

Wed Apr 29 13:46:07 2009: 6275 Tom

hi, I have an Acronis image of OpenServer5.0.5 converted to VMware. And already have the drivers for BusLogic with: "fd (64) unix link = BLC root = hd (42) swap = hd (41) btld = fd (65)" and mount, ....... installed, which is everything but the reboot comes a error:

Here's the thing: The person who wrote this article used an older version of VMware. and installed 5.0.5. It's quite possible that VMware has changed its SCSI driver since then and it's also possible that it just doesn't like your image.

I'd try installing as per these instructions. If that actually works, try adding your image as a secondary disk. If none of that works, I think you have to assume that VMware has changed since this was written.

Wed Apr 29 17:38:47 2009: 6285 TOm

Sorry, for german :)
I have a one VM EXSI server with two server VM's.
VM one: new is a SCO Openserver5 after instructions okay.
VM two: an old physical SCO Openserver5 than image in the VM ESX converted.

VM two:
the VM does not run properly because its drivers are missing. even after installed.

I can from the first boot the vm files and the drivers in the second copy if so, how? and what data ?

Wed Apr 29 18:17:06 2009: 6286 TonyLawrence

After mounting the image as a secondary disk, you could try copying the kernel itself to something like unix.test and then boot from that (type "unix.text" at the Boot: prompt). If that works, you could go after the drivers in /etc/conf.d and bring them over, relink, etc.

Or just copy your user data to the working vim instance.

Sat May 23 18:17:53 2009: 6394 ChrisL

Hey Tony the free ESXi 4.0 is out and it can offer
an IDE drive to the guest OS (even if the real storage
is on a SAN) so that makes it easy to virtualize old
OSes like SCO 5.0.x...hope you don't see this message
till tuesday...

Tue Jul 14 14:37:34 2009: 6632 TonyLawrence

Vmware has recently said that they support SCO 5.0.6/7 on VMware ESX Server : (link) - see page 221

Wed Jan 6 23:51:39 2010: 7882 Steve

I've tried to install Openserver 5.0.2 on Vmware server, MS virtualPC and Sun virtualBox. No success with any. Usually get the "Error initializing access to device /dev/install". I've tried the IDE and SCSI approach. I'm using a REAL floppy install disc and drive. I've tried every combination of BLTD drivers; blc, and WD's for CD and IDE. I've tried about every combo of bootstrings. I am able to get to a # prompt with the emergency boot/root floppies. This is a RAM disk kernel. It has a very basic set of commands. Can I somehow install from this prompt? Or is there any other way? The hardware emulations just seem to be to "new' for 5.0.2. I actually still run Medical Manager on an old machine and I want to get it on new hardware for maybe a year or two more. I know I got my money's worth but it's an interesting problem.

Thanks for the great instructions, but I'm running into a problem once I get to the point in the installation where I enter my license. After entering my license for 5.0.5 Host Only version, I get the error:
Invalid serialization: not installable.

The current license I'm trying to use is for
Product
Sco OpenServer 5.0
Sco OpenServer 5.0 Additional 10-user Trade-in
License from previous 10+

Model Number Lx013-0010W-5.0

Thanks for any hints or help from anyone. Currently our 11 year old server is "down" and we are doing invoices by hand....

Bob

Mon Mar 21 17:19:33 2011: 9390 TonyLawrence

That's not the right license.

That's for additional users - you need the base OS license first.

Mon Mar 21 18:23:24 2011: 9392 Bob

THANKS Tony for that HINT. Doing some MORE digging through 10 year old documentation I did find a base OS license that the installation "liked". I only have a printed email from SCO with that license and don't have the original Certificat of License and Authenticity, but it did work.

But then it failed with no root disk controller.

I have double checked my VM creation in ESXi 4.0 and everything matches the instructions.

I do see the blc successfully loaded, but on the screen where it says
Press <Enter> to begin installation
I do see the following:
%adapter - - - ha=0 type=usb_msto UDI SCSI HBA
and also a line
WARNING: Test Open Failed "hd=Sdsk", No Root Disk Controller

During installation, after entrering the license, I picked Fresh and OK
Then, I got the ERROR:
No root disk has been detected. cannot proceed.
Verify that your hardware configuration has a disk attached and configured as the primary disk.

Installation will now abort. Press <Enter>.

I have verified that I did sellect the BusLogic Parallel as the SCSI controller.
I have one hard disk as 80GB and specified as SCSI(0:0) Hard Disk 1 (I did not add a second virtual drive)

I would not think being a "Host Only" (no network) SCO installation would be the problem, but thought I would mention it.

Performance is good, and I'm not seeing any issues with it other than XWindows is refusing to start.

Installing a fresh copy of Unixware 711 in a different VM results in a fully functioning installation of Unixware, along with XWindows working correctly. This would usually be a good thing as I'd just set the settings of the non-functioning version of XWindows to be the same as the functioning and get it working that way.

Unfortunately they are already the same. The versions of the installed packages on each system are the same as well.

I'm running on VMWare 5.5, but had to P2V using ESXi 4.1 as the VMWare Converter CD wouldn't talk to ESXi 5 or above. I then copied the files from the ESXi4 datastore to one accessible by the ESXi5.5 host and ran it from there.

My Unix knowledge is not that good, I've kinda fumbled my way through getting Unixware working a few times before I was happy that I hadn't messed around with something I shouldn't, and the people that used to support this system left the company about 8 years ago, so I can't ask them about it.

Going by the last paragraph in this article, you're aware that there are issues surrounding XWindows on Sco's older products under VMWare, and was wondering if there was something you could point me in the direction of that might help.

Thanks in advance

Sam

Thu Mar 5 21:15:27 2015: 12618 TonyLawrence

I can't offer anything in that regard, sorry. I do very little with any SCO now and nothing at all with Unixware.